Robert Charles Winthrop

Robert Charles Winthrop (12 May 1809-16 November 1894) was a member of the US House of Representatives (W-MA 1) from 9 November 1840 to 25 May 1842 (succeeding Abbot Lawrence and preceding Nathan Appleton) and from 29 November 1842 to 30 July 1850 (succeeding Appleton and preceding Samuel Atkins Eliot) and a US Senator from 30 July 1850 to 1 February 1851 (succeeding Daniel Webster and preceding Robert Rantoul Jr.).

Biography
Robert Charles Winthrop was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809, the son of Lieutenant Governor Thomas L. Winthrop; he was the great-grandson of James Bowdoin. He became a lawyer in 1831 after studying with Daniel Webster, and he served in the State House from 1835 to 1840, in the US House of Representatives from 1840 to 1850, and in the US Senate from 1850 to 1851. He was defeated for re-election by a coalition of the Free Soil Party and the Democrats, and he became an independent, supporting Know Nothings candidate Millard Fillmore in 1856, Constitutional Union Party candidate John Bell in 1860, and Democratic nominee George B. McClellan in 1864. He died in 1894, having had the rare distinction of knowing every US president except for George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.